Workplace Etiquette (And Government Offices)

My hope is that peo­ple in Philip­pine gov­ern­ment offices read this because I’ve had numer­ous expe­ri­ences in our gov­ern­ment offices here where I go home feel­ing really dis­gusted and frus­trated and with a com­plaint. Name it, we have it: kilo­met­ric lines to get renewals for licenses, offices that have 3 hour breaks, per­son­nel that lead you to a wild goose chase span­ning sev­eral win­dows and floors just to get a one page gov­ern­ment doc­u­ment, Con­gress­men staff who close their offices in the after­noon just because they don’t want to work any­more, under­paid and angry gov­ern­ment employee who know noth­ing about cus­tomer ser­vice or who have already resigned their fate to the “system”.

It’s sad that here in the Philip­pines, when you talk about gov­ern­ment or “pub­lic” offices, insti­tu­tions and sys­tems, it’s usu­ally described as hav­ing lower class stan­dards com­pared to pri­vate insti­tu­tions. Our image of the Gov­ern­ment office is that dinghy, paint-running-off the wall, water marks run­ning from the ceil­ing, cramped, make-shift office in a run­down building.

There are excep­tions of course: the Makati City Hall can com­pete with the best cor­po­rate offices in and around Makati and Orti­gas, Marik­ina City is run like a well-oiled machine, Naga City is an exam­ple of good and hon­est gov­er­nance, the ST-EX is one of the best, clean­est high­ways I’ve ever seen in this coun­try, the Uni­ver­sity of the Philip­pines is still one of the best aca­d­e­mic insti­tu­tions in South East Asia, and our LRT 2 is clean and effi­cient and I remem­ber feel­ing that I was in another coun­try when I tried it for the first time. But it’s just sad that I feel like I’m in another coun­try when some­thing works well here.

Got this arti­cle from Cairo Din​ing​.Com.

For­merly per­ceived as a ‘soft’ skill, many busi­nesses have dis­cov­ered that how an employee behaves in the work­place and treats the clients & cus­tomers is one way to dis­tin­guish a good employee from a not-so-good employee. So if you want to stand out from the rest, here are a few do’s and don’t of work­place etiquette.

1. Always greet peo­ple when you first enter the work­place or when they first enter the workplace.
2. Be polite, pleas­ant and cour­te­ous when answer­ing the tele­phone. The way in which a tele­phone is answered con­veys an image of the insti­tu­tion. Since there is no visual and phys­i­cal con­tact between the caller and the per­son who answers the tele­phone, you must project cour­tesy despite your state of mind. The voice should be pleas­ant. Even when rushed, try to appear calm and unhur­ried while lead­ing the call to a con­clu­sion. Always be polite.Listen care­fully and avoid ask­ing callers to repeat what has already been said. How­ever, this does not apply to num­bers, addresses and names. In order to have cor­rect infor­ma­tion, num­bers should always be repeated and names should be spelled to the caller to ensure accuracy.
3. Answer promptly any tele­phone that rings in the work­place. When an employee is busy or absent from a desk, and the phone rings, some­one else in the work­place should answer the phone quickly–by the third ring, and do not keep a per­son on hold for a long time. An unan­swered tele­phone sug­gests that employ­ees are too busy to ser­vice clients. Maybe you are busy, but clients are very important–without them there is no busi­ness, and no job.
4. Do not answer the tele­phone when you’re in a meet­ing. Answer­ing a call dur­ing a meet­ing implies that who­ever is call­ing you is more impor­tant than the per­son sit­ting in front of you. With the excep­tion of emer­gen­cies, tak­ing a call whilst in a meet­ing is sim­ply bad man­ners. If you are expect­ing an impor­tant call, tell the per­son you are meet­ing with before the meeting.
5. Be polite, pleas­ant and cour­te­ous when talk­ing to cus­tomers and remem­ber to smile! It doesn’t mat­ter how busy you are or how bad a day you are hav­ing, always treat the cus­tomer with the same respect and polite­ness that you would expect to be treated with. That doesn’t mean you have to ask them about their day or have a full-scale con­ver­sa­tion with them but “Please” and “Thank you” goes a long way.
6. Be tact­ful with rude peo­ple. You may have a bad day but you can­not show your feel­ings to the peo­ple you serve. On the other hand, if a mem­ber of the pub­lic is rude to you, be patient and cour­te­ous. Count to ten silently and slowly, then respond politely and pos­i­tively. When nec­es­sary, give instruc­tions slowly and clearly–even if you are doing so for the tenth time that day. If you do not have the cor­rect infor­ma­tion, route the client to the appro­pri­ate person.
7. Do not chew gum.
8. Be dis­crete when cough­ing or yawn­ing. These are nec­es­sary phys­i­cal func­tions. How­ever, when done with a wide-open mouth, besides being unat­trac­tive and dis­tract­ing, they are also unhealthy. Germs can be eas­ily trans­mit­ted from one per­son to another in this man­ner. When cough­ing or yawn­ing, cover the mouth; if pos­si­ble use a tis­sue, and turn away from those around you.
9. Use pos­i­tive body lan­guage. Pos­i­tive body lan­guage shows clients that you are happy to serve them. You can con­vey this by smil­ing and pay­ing atten­tion to the per­son. Stop doing other activ­i­ties and lis­ten to the person’s con­cerns. Attend to those con­cerns or direct the per­son to some­one who can help with­out send­ing the per­son on a “wild goose chase.”
10. Avoid eat­ing at your desk when deal­ing with the pub­lic. Lunch or snacks should be eaten pri­vately. A per­son can­not eat and serve clients at the same time. If you eat onions or any other foods with strong odors, use mints or brush your teeth before attend­ing to clients. Strong food odors are offen­sive to many people.
11. Avoid per­sonal con­ver­sa­tions when a client is wait­ing. Per­sonal con­ver­sa­tions can either be con­ducted face-to-face or on the tele­phone. Talk­ing with your friends while a client is wait­ing is very annoy­ing and frus­trat­ing to the client. Wait until your break time, then you can have pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions away from pub­lic view. If another employee wants to talk when you are attend­ing to a client, try respond­ing with a nod, or tell the employee you are busy and will talk later. Attend­ing to your duties on the job is pri­or­ity, not socializing.
12. Be punc­tual: Be at work on time, as you do not want to keep your clients wait­ing unnecessarily.
13. Avoid annoy­ing habits. There are dis­tract­ing habits which other peo­ple may per­ceive as unpleas­ant and/or offen­sive, such as pick­ing your nose, bit­ing your nails, hum­ming to your­self, etc. Iden­tify your annoy­ing habits and avoid them while on the job.
14. Dis­cour­age per­sonal vis­i­tors. Per­sonal vis­i­tors should only be at your work­place if there is an emer­gency. Oth­er­wise, meet friends in your own time.